


the biggest fish in the river gets that way by never being caught

by CatchAsCatchCan



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Found Family, M/M, Mermaids, The Lake (tm), arguments with a mythical creature about property law, fishing related grievances
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-08
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:42:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21944362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatchAsCatchCan/pseuds/CatchAsCatchCan
Summary: The boy in the water laughs, bubbles briefly obscuring his face. As he slowly rises to the surface, the boy's hair flattens around his face and he has to flick it back, revealing long, pointed ears and what Travis is pretty sure are …gills?The boy waves, mockingly. “Hi,” he says. “You fell in my lake.”“Your lake?” Travis asks, bewildered. “I’ve never seen you before, and I come here all the time.”“I know,” the boy says. “You kill all my fucking fish.”
Relationships: Travis Konecny/Nolan Patrick
Comments: 44
Kudos: 489
Collections: Hockey Holidays 2019





	the biggest fish in the river gets that way by never being caught

**Author's Note:**

  * For [callabang](https://archiveofourown.org/users/callabang/gifts).

> Happy holidays Calla, hope you enjoy this treat!
> 
> Title is a quote from the movie Big Fish.
> 
> Inspired by the flyers' off-season video with TK, though this takes place in a very specific AU where the pond by his house is about three times as large.

Travis loves summer. He also loves his team and he loves Philly, but sometimes it’s nice to just come home. He misses his parents too much during the season. And, he misses the lake. 

Well, it’s not so much a lake as it is a really big pond, but it’s surrounded by reeds and is full of fish, so it makes do. Travis likes to take a little motorboat out into the middle and fish for hours by himself and not think about anything at all. He saves his big, fancy boat for Lake Erie and his twice-weekly family fishing trips. The lake, lowercase, is just for him.

And, he supposes, it’s also for the neighbors who come by to fish and chat, because he lives in a town with twenty houses, one stop sign, and not much else to do. But usually when he comes out at the right time, when it’s just after the hottest part of the day and most people have migrated back inside to start up dinner and avoid the mosquitoes, there’s nobody there but him and the water. 

When he was a kid, he would waste away the hours at the lake with his dad. His parents used to joke that he spent more time in a boat than on the land, but Travis likes how peaceful it is, with no sounds but the ripple of the water against the wind. 

Lately though, Travis has been having problems with his boat. It rocks, randomly, when it should be steady, and slows down even when he turns the motor up. And, he hasn’t been catching nearly as much as usual. 

The boat is as old as him though, so that’s probably why. 

One day, Travis is out on the lake again, laying in the boat and napping, not even pretending to fish, when he hears a huge splash and then water hits his face. He shoots up and looks around, but there’s nothing, just some ripples in the water. 

He lays back down, but not before glancing around suspiciously. 

A few minutes later, he’s forced back up again when his head jolts against the side of the boat. The boat is rocking in the water, and he can’t see any possible cause. The motor must be fucked up, or maybe he’s bumping up against some weird underwater tree. 

The boat rocks again, harder this time, at the exact same moment that Travis tries to stand up. He takes one step forward to steady himself, windmills his arms around a few times, and then topples over the side.

Travis has just enough time to squeeze his eyes shut and hope for the best before he hits the water and sinks. He didn’t fall far, and he’s always been an excellent swimmer, so he’s really more irritated than anything else. 

And then Travis opens his eyes and through the blurry water, he sees a face. 

Travis screams, long ropes of bubbles escaping from his mouth as he attempts to swim up as fast as he can. He reaches the surface in a matter of seconds, shuddering both from the cold water and from whatever the _hell_ is in his lake. 

He levers himself back onto the boat, spitting lake water out of his mouth and shaking it out of his hair. Travis drags a spare towel over and wraps it around his shoulders. His first thought is “dead body,” but that didn’t make sense. Or, “lake is haunted,” which makes even less sense. 

“Holy fucking shit fuck,” he yells, and then runs his hands through his hair and down his face. “What the fuck. What the fuck!”

“Dude,” a low voice says. “Chill out.” 

Travis whirls around and nearly falls out of the boat again. 

Someone laughs and then the laughter turns to bubbles. 

“What the hell?” Travis asks, and then there’s a thump on the side of his boat like someone kicked it. He looks over the edge and sees the face again, blinking up at him from a few inches underwater. 

It’s a boy, probably about the same age as Travis, with long brown hair that’s floating up from his head in waves. Travis looks closer and realizes that there’s kelp wound through it, the way he’s seen girls weave feathers into their hair at school. 

Travis waves at the face in the water. “Um,” he says, “hi?” 

The boy in the water laughs, bubbles briefly obscuring his face. As he slowly rises to the surface, the boy's hair flattens around his face and he has to flick it back, revealing long, pointed ears and what Travis is pretty sure are … _gills_?

The boy waves back, mockingly. “Hi,” he says. “You fell in my lake.”

“Your lake?” Travis asks, bewildered. “I’ve never seen you before, and I come here all the time.”

“I know,” the boy says. “You kill all my fucking fish.”

“Your fish?” 

“Dude, are you broken? Can you say more than two words?” The boy moves forward, latches an arm over the side of Travis’ boat, and uses it to haul himself up close enough to rap Travis on the head with dripping wet knuckles. 

“Hey! Yes, I can, I’m just confused!” Travis exclaims. “Who the hell are you?” 

“I live here, duh,” the boy says. 

“You live… here?”

“In. The. Lake,” the boy says, rolling his eyes and punctuating every word with more taps to Travis’ head. 

“You live in the lake?”

The boy nods, and shifts in the water. Travis sees a telltale flash of scales, and it takes him a second before he puts together what he’s seeing. His brain stutters to a stop as he realizes that the boy has what can only be described as a tail. From the waist down, he’s covered in dark scales with bright, iridescent tones along the sides, finally tapering to a wide fin just visible under the dark water. It would be beautiful, if it’s very presence wasn’t impossible.

As Travis looks closer, he realizes that the pale arm slung across the side of the boat is also scaled, and that the boy’s fingers are ever so slightly webbed. 

The boy starts to laugh. “How did it take you that long to notice?” 

Travis just gapes at him. “So you’re—what, a mermaid? That’s not possible.”

“I’ve been here for twenty years, dude. I’m pretty sure it’s possible.”

“You’ve been living in my lake for twenty years?”

“It’s deeper than you think,” the boy responds, which is ominous as fuck. “Also, not your lake.”

“Well, it’s also not yours!”

“I live here. It’s mine.”

“That’s not how property law works, bud.”

“You don’t know shit about property law, bud,” the boy—the _mermaid_ says, rolling his eyes. 

“Well, neither do you!” Travis nearly shouts, then pauses. “Wait, how do you even know what ‘property law’ means?”

“I don’t,” the mermaid boy admits with a shrug. “I just assumed you didn’t either. Besides, it doesn’t matter. I live here, so it’s mine. You’re not here most of the year; you don’t even want it.”

Travis shakes his head like he’s still clearing lake water out of it. “Hey, mermaid boy,” he says. The mermaid boy looks affronted. “Do you have a name, or am I just going to have to keep calling you that?”

“Of course I have a name. Everything has a name,” he says. “My name is Nolan.”

Travis pauses. “You’re a mermaid named Nolan?” 

The mermaid looks confused. “Yes? That’s what I just told you.”

“Aren’t mermaids supposed to have fancy magical names, like Ariel or Aquamarine?” 

“Do I look like a fucking Aquamarine?” Nolan the mermaid asks, then gestures to the lake around him. “I live in this scrubby lake, dude, not the Atlantic Ocean.” 

“Hey! It’s a nice lake,” Travis defends.

Nolan preens. “Yes, it is. It’s my lake, so I take care of it.” 

“Uh huh,” Travis says, but he lets it drop. He’s probably not going to win this argument with the person who actually lives in the lake. “Why haven’t I seen you before?”

“I didn’t want you to,” Nolan says. “The fish say it’s not safe.” 

“The fish?”

“You catch them and you eat them. They don’t trust you.” 

Travis supposes that this is probably fair, though it does create another issue, which is that Nolan can maybe talk to fish. 

“What about now?” Travis asks. 

Nolan shrugs. He’s still holding himself up on the boat, but he’s moved so that he’s got both arms crossed and hooked over the side, like he’s holding himself up out of a pool. “I got bored,” he says, after a while.

“I’ve been in this lake for a really fucking long time, and I love it, but there’s nothing to do besides harass boats.” 

“Are you the only one here?”

Nolan nods. “Have been for a while,” he says. He sounds a little lonely. 

“I’m sorry,” Travis says, and he means it. 

“It’s not a big deal,” Nolan mutters, and shrugs again. “But you leave every year, for so long. Where do you go?” 

Travis blinks at him. “Where do I go?”

“I’ve never left this lake,” Nolan says. “All I know about anything is what people talk about when they come here to kill my fish for fun. Tell me about where you go.”

So, Travis does. He leans over the side of the boat for so long that his neck gets sunburned and sore, and tells a mermaid about hockey and Philadelphia and plane flights around the world. He tells Nolan about his family and Lawson, about Claude and Shayne and Oskar.

“So,” Nolan says, looking a little confused. “You have two families? One here and one there?”

Travis stops and considers, then nods. “Yeah,” he says. “I do.”

“That sounds nice,” Nolan says, flicking his tail out of the water. “I wish I had two families.” 

“What about you?” Travis asks. “What do you do?”

“I hibernate in the winter,” Nolan says, and Travis can’t quite tell if he’s joking. He hopes he isn’t, because the lake freezes over during winter, and he would hate to see anyone trapped under it. Even if he does privately think it would be kind of cool to watch pond hockey upside-down. 

And then it’s Nolan’s turn to talk. He has much fewer adventures to tell, but he knows all of the town gossip. “I spend all my time here just listening to people,” he says. “There isn't really anything else to do, and people will say anything when they think no one’s around.”

“For instance,” he continues, “your neighbors are going to have a baby.” 

“Really?” Travis asks, perking up. He loves babies.

Nolan nods. “Everyone comes out here to propose or get married,” he says. “I’ve seen so many cameo-print weddings, dude.” 

Travis laughs. This town does have a thing for cameo-print weddings.

Eventually, the sun starts to set and Travis has to leave or risk walking home in the dark.

“Hey,” Nolan says, lowering himself back down into the water. “Come back tomorrow.”

Travis nods. “Yeah,” he says. “For sure.”

* * *

Travis comes back tomorrow. And the next day, and the next. One day, he brings some sandwiches that his mom made, and when Nolan sees them, his eyes light up.

“Can I have one?” he asks. 

“Uh, sure?” Travis says, confused. “I thought you, like, only ate raw fish and kelp and shit.”

“I do,” Nolan says, “which is why I’ve always wanted to try bread.”

Travis can’t argue with that. He leans over the boat and unwraps half a sandwich. Nolan reaches up, goes straight past the sandwich, and wipes his wet hands on Travis’ shirt. Then, apparently satisfied, he snags the sandwich out of Travis’ hand. He takes a huge bite with his pointy little teeth and immediately spits it out.

“What the fuck is this?” he says, tugging a piece of cheese out of the sandwich.

“It’s cheese,” Travis says. “Like from a cow?”

“I know what cheese is, dipshit. Like, everyone here is a farmer. I just didn’t expect it to taste that gross.”

“Hey! Cheese is good, and my mom made these, so you can’t dislike them.”

Nolan huffs, pulls the cheese out, and devours the rest of the sandwich in two bites. “The rest of it is fine, but that stuff is just gross.”

Travis spends the next week bringing Nolan weird foods to try. They quickly discover that aside from cheese, Nolan really hates chocolate, tomatoes, and fruit roll-ups. Because he’s a fucking freak, he loves the disgusting power bars that Travis despises. 

“Good,” Travis says. “You can have them all.” 

“Fuck yeah,” Nolan says. He looks more excited than Travis has ever seen before, and Travis can’t help laughing.

* * *

Travis’ mom finds a tiny portable speaker at a yard sale, and Travis spends the next two weeks showing Nolan the wonders of Spotify. Nolan has heard music before, mostly from the radio of parked cars or from other fishers, but he’s never been able to just listen before.

By this point, he’s started pulling himself up onto the boat entirely, always at the times that Travis knows that no one else will be by. His tail glints in the sunlight, flopped over the edge of the boat and trailing in the water as Nolan lays next to him. 

After he lets Nolan work his phone, which takes some figuring out because the touchscreen doesn’t respond well to scales, it turns out that what Nolan really likes is weird indie shit with lots of sad singing and well-placed acoustic guitars. Travis deems this passable and Nolan pretends to throw his phone in the water. 

Nolan hates country music. Travis tries playing him some of his favorites, but Nolan claps two hands over his ears and threatens to jump back in the water to escape. Travis thinks that it’s probably because he’s never known the joys of riding in a tractor, but who is he to say. 

He realizes, after Nolan has been scrolling through his phone for a few minutes absentmindedly swiping on random things just like Travis taught him, that Nolan has no idea what anything says. Nolan probably can’t read, and when Travis says this, Nolan shoots him a look like, _duh_. 

So, Travis starts bringing his old books to the lake and huddling close to Nolan while he makes him sound out words. Nolan gets so frustrated that he flings Travis’ mom’s ancient copy of a Magic Treehouse book over the side of the boat, and then fishes it out and sullenly apologizes when Travis gets angry. 

Sometimes, when Nolan asks him to or when Travis is too tired to be an effective teacher, he just sits on the side of the boat while Nolan floats below, and he reads aloud to him. 

Travis was never much of a reader before this, but he finds that he really likes mystery novels. He vows to pick up a few more at the airport the next time they have an away game. He thinks Claude would probably be pleased.

* * *

"Nolan," he says one day, after they've been silent for a while. Nolan hums in acknowledgment from the water below, but doesn't press for Travis to say anything more.

"Why did you talk to me, that first day?" Travis has his eyes closed, not really expecting an answer.

Nolan doesn't reply for a few moments, but when he finally does his voice is softer than Travis has ever heard it. "You leave, and then you come back. No one ever leaves this place, except you."

Travis doesn't really know how to respond, but he reaches down from the side of the boat and squeezes Nolan's hand. 

* * *

The end of the off-season sneaks up on him. He really only has two months of downtime before he has to head back to Philly for training and the preseason. 

He hasn’t told Nolan when he’s leaving. Nolan has to know, because he’s left every year at the same time, but it’s different. For the first time since he was drafted, he almost doesn't want to leave. Almost.

When he has six days to go before his flight back, he comes to the lake with Nolan’s favorite foods and an extra bag of granola bars. He takes his boat out to the middle of the lake and waits for Nolan, just like he usually does.

Nolan surfaces a few minutes later, and when he sees the food in Travis’ hands, he makes grabby motions at him until Travis hands the bags over. 

He floats on his back, holding his bounty against his chest like a prize.

“This is a lot, Teeks,” he says, because he’d learned about hockey nicknames a few days ago and has been trying them out ever since. “What’s the special occasion?”

Travis rips the band-aid off. “I have to leave again,” he says quietly. “Soon.”

Nolan jolts upright in the water, suddenly steely-eyed and frowning. He drops the bag and it bobs away in the water. “What?”

“I have to leave in six days. I’m going back to play hockey.”

Nolan splashes a wave of water at him with his tail. “You fucking promised me you’d be back every day,” he says, voice low. His eyes are steely, but his voice cracks on the last word. 

“I can’t,” Travis says, pleading. "I have to go back. You knew I would have to go back." 

Nolan bares his teeth at Travis and for the first time since Travis fell overboard, he is afraid of his friend.

“Fuck you!” Nolan spits, before sending another wave of water over the side of the boat. He dives back under the surface and won’t come out no matter how long Travis spends calling for him. 

Travis comes by the next day, but Nolan never shows up. He doesn’t the next day either, or the next. Travis feels the time running out like a steadily building panic. He has to see Nolan before he goes, has to make sure Nolan knows how much Travis will miss him, how important he's become in such a short time. In the space of just a few weeks, Nolan has firmly embedded himself in Travis’ life. He can’t imagine going a day without seeing him. 

On his second-to-last day home, he comes to the lake, leans over the side of the boat, and says, as loud as he can, “I’m sorry.”

He can just barely see Nolan, far under the water, but he knows that Nolan can hear him. “I’m sorry that I’m leaving. I wish I didn’t have to.”

Slowly, Nolan rises up through the water to meet him. He doesn’t look angry now so much as sad, and he can’t quite meet Travis’ eyes. “No you don’t,” he says. “You love your second family.”

“I do,” Travis says. “But I also—I also love spending time here with you.”

Nolan, always rosy, flushes even deeper. Travis hadn’t known that mermaids could blush until now.

“I wasn’t mad at you for leaving,” Nolan says, “not really. I was mad that you waited to tell me until you had six days left.” 

Travis nods. “I’m sorry. I should have told you I was leaving sooner.”

Nolan shakes his head. “I shouldn’t have avoided you. You were right, I knew this was going to happen.” 

‘I’m still sorry,” Travis says. There isn’t much else he can say. 

Nolan shrugs. “Can I come up?” he asks. He’s never asked before. Travis nods and Nolan heaves himself over the side of the boat. He props himself up on one elbow and his tail hangs over the side, a shining, beautiful reminder of what separates them.

“Can I touch it?” Travis asks.

Nolan looks confused. 

“Your tail,” Travis clarifies. Nolan nods, hesitantly. 

Travis steps forward and crouches down on his knees at Nolan’s side. He reaches out a hand and rests it where Nolan’s calf would be if he had one. His scales are rough and cool to the touch, and Nolan shivers when Travis traces them with his finger.

“You’re beautiful,” Travis says, almost wonderingly. 

“Shut up,” Nolan says, but he sounds sort of pleased.

“I wish you could come with me,” Travis says. 

Nolan makes a surprised noise. “You do?” 

Travis nods. Nolan blinks at him, then grabs his arm and surges him forward. 

“Hey, wha—” he starts to say, but then Nolan is kissing him, and Travis is too caught up with throwing his arms around Nolan’s neck to say anything else. Then, the arm Nolan was supporting himself with gives out under Travis’ weight, and they tumble over into a heap.

Travis just laughs into Nolan’s mouth and shifts so that he’s practically laying on top of him. Nolan fists his hands in Travis' shirt and doesn't let go.

Nolan’s kisses are a little sloppy and a lot inexperienced. Travis tilts his head and wraps one hand around Nolan’s jaw, controlling the kiss and gentling Nolan’s motions until they’re just lazily making out in the bottom of Travis’ boat. 

It’s every teenage fantasy he’d ever had, minus the tail. 

When they finally pull apart, Travis rolls over and lays down next to Nolan, lacing their fingers together. They stay there in silence until Travis has to leave for the last time. 

His flight is in the morning, and he hasn’t even begun to pack. 

He lingers by the edge of the water until the last possible minute, then he kisses Nolan one last time, gets out of the boat, and starts the short walk home in the growing dark. If he has to wipe his eyes a few times, that’s no one’s business but his own.

* * *

He wakes up in the morning to a harsh rapping noise at his first floor window. He opens it and peers out, then shakes his head and blinks rapidly. 

Standing right outside his window, unsteadily holding on to the ledge but with a huge grin on his face, is Nolan. 

“Hey,” he says. He doesn't know what else to say.

“Hey,” Nolan says, mockingly. Travis just blinks at him, and Nolan's smile fades a little.

Travis finally finds his voice. “No offense, but how the hell are you here?” he asks. 

“Can I come in?” Nolan says, ignoring Travis' very pressing question. “I just learned to walk and the only thing I’m wearing is a blanket I stole out of someone’s parked car.”

Travis nods rapidly, then runs around to unlock the door. He’s lucky his parents are asleep, because they would definitely have words with him about welcoming naked, formerly mythological creatures into the house.

Once he has Nolan sitting on his bed and situated in some of his brother's oldest, baggiest clothes, he asks again. “Not that I’m not glad to see you, but how are you here? How do you have—legs?”

“You said you wished I could come with you,” Nolan says, like that explains everything. 

Travis screws up his face, and he must look as confused as he feels, because Nolan continues unprompted, “There used to be more like me, in the lake. I used to have a family there, but they all left.”

Travis leans forward and runs a hand down Nolan's arm. “Why did they leave?” Travis asks, softly.

“They met someone who fell in love with them, and so they gave up their tails and went away,” Nolan says, simple as that.

“How?” Travis asks.

“Mermaids are lonely, by nature,” Nolan says, staring down at his hands. His fingers no longer webbed, and Travis reaches over and tangles his hand together with Nolan's. “We’re not so much mythological as we are cursed. Trapped in tiny, boring, polluted bodies of water, until—," and then he breaks off and stares over Travis' shoulder. 

“Until?” Travis prompts.

Nolan shrugs and still doesn't quite meet his eye. “Until we can accept someone’s sincere invitation to leave with them." 

"And you accepted my offer?" Travis asks. "And that grew you legs?" 

Nolan nods. "More or less. It hurt like a real motherfucker though. But, that’s what all my sisters did, and my dad too.”

“They just left you?” Travis asks, horrified. 

Nolan rubs at his face and looks away again. “I don’t resent them. I just never met anyone worth giving up my tail for.”

“And I was?” Travis asks. "Worth it?" 

Nolan nods again. “I loved the lake, because it was my home. But I want to see everything you talked about. I want to go to a hockey game and eat at restaurants and not be trapped in the same tiny place for the rest of my life. I get why they wanted to leave, now. I get why you leave every year.”

Travis smiles so widely it hurts. “I want to do all those things with you. Nolan, I was so sad when I had to leave, you don’t even know.”

Nolan shakes his head. “I think I know.” 

Travis leans forward and knocks their foreheads together. “Are you going to come with me?”

Nolan rolls his eyes. “No, I gave up my fins so I can help your parents with the housework. Of course I’m coming with you, idiot.”

Travis reaches forward and crushes him into a hug. Nolan freezes, then wraps his arms around Travis. 

It’s a nice moment, and then Nolan breaks it by saying, “Also, I really want to see an airplane.”

Travis laughs, delighted. “Then let’s get you a ticket.” 

Travis can feel Nolan smiling against his chest. “I want to meet your second family,” he says. “I want to know how they put up with you for nine months every year.”

Travis pulls back and looks at Nolan, assessing. “Yeah,” he says, “I think they’ll love you.”

**Author's Note:**

> the answer to the question "how does nolan get into philly without a passport?" is answered in the sequel, Travis Konecny Commits International Fraud
> 
> You can also find me on twitter [@catchascatchcn](https://www.twitter.com/catchascatchcn)!


End file.
